The Federal Aviation Administration ordered a nationwide ground stop on Friday afternoon following a communications failure that affected all en route air traffic control centers. This outage caused thousands of flights to face delays or cancellations, according to FlightAware, while many aircraft remained in the air heading toward United States airports.
Emanuel slams former secretary
WME executive chairman Ari Emanuel criticized former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg on X, claiming he made "zero progress" modernizing the FAA during his four years in office. Emanuel wrote, "You left a failing system in place." One commenter questioned why Emanuel blamed a previous administration when the FAA has been a "burning dumpster fire" since current transportation secretary Sean Duffy took office. Another commenter suggested the post was an attempt to attack a presidential rival of Emanuel’s brother, Rahm Emanuel.
While Buttigieg watched the press conference from Denver airport and told the New York Times, "I have questions," Duffy addressed the public after the flight stop ended Friday evening. Duffy stated, "I can’t build things if I don’t have money," regarding his demands for modernization funds from Congress. He admitted that making upgrades may have introduced instability into the air control system, though he said, "I didn’t anticipate that we would have an outage like this."
Duffy and Mullin respond to outage
Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin said there are no signs of an attack and confirmed all flights are located. He stated that his priority is to restore communications and land all planes, but he did not provide a specific timeframe for the resolution. The FAA previously ordered a national ground stop in January 2023 because of a failure in the crew safety notification system.
